


twelve pumps of mocha and a double chocolate bagel

by independentalto



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bagel AU, Coffee Shop, F/M, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 19:54:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16024853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/independentalto/pseuds/independentalto
Summary: "Twelve pumps of mocha? Who thefuckgets twelve pumps of mocha?"Or, the story of how Lance Hunter meets Bobbi Morse through terrible coffee and an even worse bagel.





	twelve pumps of mocha and a double chocolate bagel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazyfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/gifts).



> this was literally meant to be like 2k I'm not sure how it got away from me but without further ado

Bobbi doesn’t understand how someone can put so much mocha in their coffee. 

She’s seen some truly heinous coffees in her time at SHIELD, she really has. She’s seen someone order their coffee with half almond milk, half cream, and three shots of pumpkin spice to boot. She’s even seen an old lady demand a fresh pot of coffee every time she came in with three creams, except the creams were consumed separately. 

“ _ Twelve  _ pumps of mocha?” Despite the increasingly impatient queue of customers in the line and the growing number of coffees to be made, almost the entire kitchen staff is gathered at the end of the coffee bar, staring at the most recent coffee order Skye, one of the girls, has just pulled off of the on-the-go printer. Even Elena, who’s in charge of the sandwich station, has taken pause to gawk at the receipt. “Who the  _ fuck  _ gets twelve pumps of mocha?”

“Would you like some coffee with that mocha?” Bobbi snatches the cup in question. Skye goes back to the other side of the coffee bar, gathering up all of the different cups with gusto. “I mean,  _ honestly.  _ You might as well have just asked for the bottle. They’re lucky we don’t charge for extra swirls.” 

Skye darts around her, handing out her latest batch of coffees. “Large hot regular! Medium ice, two and two? No, ma’am, that’s a medium ice with skim, yours is here...what are you waiting on? Bacon egg and cheese? Yo-Yo, where’s that sandwich?”

A bag nearly hits her in the head, save for Bobbi snatching it out of the air and handing it to the other girl. She barely manages to catch the other Elena throws, frowning at the receipt. “A double chocolate bagel? Who the hell orders these? I didn’t even know we still had them?” Last she’d seen them, they’d been sitting in the back of the freezer ready to expire.

Damn. She’d really been angling to take those home. Her budget didn’t really give a damn whether she was trying to eat healthy or not, and free was free. Piper, the closing girl, already knew to call Bobbi when they closed for the night so she could clean out the shelves. 

After all, colleges didn’t really give a shit whether you’d recently been disowned for being bisexual. All they really cared about was whether you’d be able to cough up the money for the next semester. 

“Twelve pumps of mocha,” Bobbi yells, letting the disgust curdle her tone. (It was twelve pumps of mocha, she reasons.  _ And  _ the customer...Lance, the reciept had said -- had gotten extra cream and sugar. Just thinking about it was enough to give her a sugar-induced migraine.) “And a double chocolate bagel, strawberry cream cheese on it for Lance?”

“That’s my name, darling, don’t overuse it,” 

Bobbi’s hackles rise instantly at the  _ darling _ . “Your coffee and sandwich are disgusting,” she informs him with a curled lip, no longer interested in finding out the person behind the horrendous coffee order. “And it’s  _ Bobbi _ , not  _ darling _ . Have a nice day.” 

“I’d do yourself a favor and like...never come back,” Skye answered in a stage whisper. “Number one, our mocha pump is hell and takes a Herculean effort to use, and two, Bobbi has and will spit in people’s coffee. And she’s here every day, so she’ll probably spit in it the next time you come around.” 

Lance raises his cup of coffee in acknowledgement. “Name’s Hunter, love. No one calls me Lance except for my mum and girls I make scream in bed.” Bobbi flipped him off while taking the next customer’s order with a saccharine smile. “Thanks for the coffee,  _ Bob _ . I’ll be around some, yeah?” 

Unfortunately, Bobbi had to wait until he’d left the shop to let out a stream of curses under her breath. (It was Manager Phil’s number one rule: no cussing out the customer until they’ve left the shop.) “ _ No _ one calls me Bob,” she fumes, slamming a cold cup onto the counter so hard her wavy ponytail swings. “ _ No  _ one. And what kind of fucker just assumes I’ll sleep with them?” 

“You  _ are  _ pretty,” one of the other girls, Jemma, volunteers with a blush. 

“I would,” Skye translates with a brazen deadpan. “And Jem would too, if she wasn’t with me.” She plants a kiss on Jemma’s cheek, much to the amusement of the customers. “You love us, Morse. Don’t deny it.” 

Bobbi just laughs and shakes her head, trying to put Twelve Mocha Man behind her for the rest of the day. Infuriating customers came through all the time. It was part of the job, and if you couldn’t handle a couple of idiots with ridiculous coffee orders you probably weren’t made out to be a barista.

* * *

 

“Large ice, extra extra, with...oh,  _ heavens _ . Bobbi!” 

Bobbi, who’d been in the back getting an extra bottle of mocha syrup, pulls her ponytail and frowns. “What’s up, Jemma?” From the corner of her eye, she sees Elena pull a double chocolate bagel from the box at the sandwich station and groans. “You’re  _ joking _ .”

“Trust me, I wish I was,” Elena snorts. “At this rate, we might actually have to start bringing them out in the morning. Which means I need to tell Mack to add them to the order.” Everyone silently rolls their eyes. It was no secret Elena’s verbal sparring with the baker deliveryman, Mack, was their foreplay. “All yours.” 

In all honesty, they were just waiting for one of them to catch them going at in the walk-in freezer. Phil had almost done it once, but luckily, Skye had been in the back and had banged on the door just in time. 

“Good  _ morning _ , Bob, you make my coffee for me today?” Lance -- no,  _ Hunter _ , she resolves to call him; she wasn’t going to be one of the girls that was supposedly after his dick, no matter how attractive he seemed -- drawls. “I’m sure it’s  _ delicious _ .” He takes the shoved cup with a wink, and Bobbi wants to roll her eyes so hard they’d disappear into the back of her head. 

“It’s Bobbi, for the last time,” she informs him curtly as he takes a sip. “Elena’ll have your bagel up in a second. Have a good day.” Right on cue, Elena hands her the bag, and she thrusts it out to him between two fingers. “Try not to have a sugar rush in our parking lot, okay? Can you do that?” 

“S’pose I can try,” Hunter sips at his coffee nonchalantly. “What’s it to you, Bob?” 

“It’s  _ Bobbi _ ,” 

“Fine,  _ Bobbi  _ it is,” and oh  _ damn,  _ she’s made a mistake, because she’s just noticing his accent for the first time. It’s like the universe is plotting against her; it  _ knows  _ she’s a sucker for accents and decides that the only person within her vicinity with an accent is the most  _ annoying  _ man alive. “I’ll  _ try  _ not to have a sugar rush in your parking lot. If only for your sake.” 

“ _ Goodbye _ , Hunter.” 

“So cruel, yet so beautiful. You’ll be the end of me.” Hunter raises his coffee cup at her once more before exiting the coffee shop. “Thanks for the coffee, love! See you around!” 

What the  _ hell  _ was his accent, and why did it seem so familiar...?

“British,” Jemma says, neatly filling in the blanks of her confusion. “Just a little more southern than mine.” Right. Bobbi supposes that makes some sort of sense. “Are you sure you’re not trying to flirt with him, Bobbi?” 

Even if spittakes hadn’t been a thing, Bobbi’s sure she would’ve had the same reaction to that amound of absurdity. “ _ Me _ ? Flirt with  _ him _ ?” Was Jemma on something? She had to be -- that was the only explanation. Phil would have to run a drug test on her at the end of their shift. “I -- he’s -- no fucking  _ way _ !  _ Hunter? _ ” Were they talking about the same person? 

“No,” she says once her brain’s managed to restart. “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten laid, I know --” She shot a glare at Skye’s muttered ‘You mean so long you’ve basically dried up’. “But I really just want to focus getting through undergrad without having to sell my boobs on the street.” An old lady, overhearing their conversation, shoots them an offended look. “Ma’am, I’m bisexual. If that in  _ any  _ way affects if you’re getting coffee from SHIELD, I’d suggest you change where you’re getting it, because it’s currently being made by myself and two lesbians. And we’re all broke undergraduate students, so we’re going to be here a while.” 

Skye’s cackle follows the old lady all the way out the door.

* * *

 

Phil knows the trash smells bad on a hot day. He knows that the girls draw straws to see who has to take out the trash whenever the thermometer reaches over 85. More often than not, he knows it’s poor Jemma that draws the short straw, and it affords her an extra thirty minutes while she struggles to get the full bag over her head and into the dumpster. 

This particular Tuesday, though, he knows that Bobbi’s just seen the monthly wad of bills on her kitchen table the night before and’s depleted her monthly savings to pay them all. He’s tried to do his best to help her out -- calling her on as many morning shifts as possible, working around her schedule -- everything short of giving her a raise. 

(It wasn’t that she didn’t deserve it. But it would’ve meant giving Grant, the whiny closer, a raise as well, and Phil was pretty sure he did drugs in the bathroom on his breaks.)  

He  _ also  _ knows that it’s about the time of day Lance Hunter steps into his shop for his daily coffee (if he could call it that), and that he parks in the back. So at 10:57AM, no more, no less, he grabs the cup of straws out of Skye’s hands. “Bobbi, take the trash out,” he says, and Skye and Jemma’s sighs of relief can be heard across the coffee bar. “If I keep you on this register anymore, I’m pretty sure you’re going to start spitting in people’s coffee again,” 

“Thank you,” Bobbi mouths to him as she shrugs off her apron. She’s not sure how Phil knows it’s that time of the month, but she appreciates that he does and tries to help her out with it. The bills had been a little more ferocious than they usually were, the recent heat wave making sure she’d cranked the AC to high just to maintain a comfortable standard of living. 

She drags the trash bags out to the dumpster with a ferocity she reserves specifically for the anger she wants to direct at the bill collectors. The first bag lands in the dumpster with a loud  _ thump _ , and for some reason, the sound echoes in Bobbi’s chest, loud with hopelessness and frustration. 

“FUCK!” she yells at the dumpster instead, kicking it hard. When would she have to stop relying on Phil’s charity to get three decent meals a day? When would she be able to pay all of her bills without draining herself dry? Why had she chosen to come out, anyways? Why hadn’t she chosen to wait until she’d gotten  _ out  _ of college? Everything would’ve been easier if she had. 

She wouldn’t be  _ here  _ at this stupid coffee shop (that was a lie, she loved SHIELD, Phil was so sweet and so were all of the girls on staff) making stupidly shit money and worrying about paying her bills every month and peering around every corner to see if her parents were there. She wouldn’t be  _ here  _ questioning her identity every other day and eating herself up over whether she could go back into the closet, if not for the sake of all of this being over. 

_ Thump.  _ “Stupid fucking big-ass piece of shit --!” Another angry kick. “FUCK!”

“I s’pose I should be glad you’re not making my coffee for me today?” 

The third bag hung precariously from the lip of the dumpster when she whipped around to see a burnt orange t-shirt advertising the Rolling Stones. “What do you  _ want _ , Hunter?” Great. She was sweaty, poor, and standing five feet away from the most disgusting dumpster in the entire neighborhood. What else did the universe want from her? “I’m having a really shitty day, so can you just. Can you just  _ not _ ?” She hopes he’ll at least grant her that one mercy. As much as Bobbi despised Hunter and his daily coffees, she had to admit he was growing on her a little. At least with the whole twelve-pumps-of-mocha thing. 

Hunter doesn’t comment on Bobbi’s mood, but instead gestures to the still-hanging trash bag, glinting precariously in the almost-noon sun. She’s finding it’s a great metaphor for the current state of her life. “You need a hand there, love?” 

“I didn’t know man-children knew how to take out the trash.” 

“It’s either that or you listen to me order another double chocolate bagel. I know you hate those.”

“It’s not that I hate them, it’s just...” Bobbi sighs heavily. Hunter takes that as another sign to heave the next bag of trash into the dumpster. “They’re about to expire, and you keep ordering them. I was planning to take them home.” She takes the silence between that bag and the next to understand that Hunter’s reacting with  _ some  _ sort of emotion...but she’s just not sure which one. 

There’s a lot of them she’s not equipped to handle right now. 

“Take them home?” It’s a cop-out answer, he knows, but he figures it’s the one that’ll probably not earn him a trash bag to the face. “You like the bagels that much?” Bobbi throws another trash bag into the dumpster. “Or is there something else?”

THUD. “Look, I’m not like the other girls in there.” THUD. “Skye and Jemma are dating, yeah. Skye majors in computer science and Jemma majors in biochem. They’re gay. I’m bi.” THUD. “If that’s a breaking point for you now, I’d start running.” THUD. “It’ll be nice to have someone I...know running away from me instead of the other way around.”

“What’s that got to do with the bagels?” THUD.

“I’m getting there.” THUD. “Skye and Jemma’s parents adore them. They’re their little darlings, and should they get married, both of them would be quarreling over who would pay for the wedding.” THUD. “Mine, on the other hand, decided I wouldn’t be their daughter. Legally.” THUD. “They don’t talk to me anymore. I don’t get anything from them. I was lucky to get a job from Phil and for him to let me take the bagels home.” THUD. “So yeah.” Bobbi tosses her ponytail back over her shoulder. “Life story. Take it or leave it.”

Hunter chooses to remain silent for a bit and picks up another trash bag, heaving it into the dumpster. “My best mate lives on my couch because he’s gay.” Bobbi’s stomach settles in an odd sort of way, and she feels a little guilty for having been so ferocious with the trash bags earlier. Of course he’d understand. It still didn’t mean she could have him. “Parents threw out my brother ‘cause he used to be my sister.” 

“Oh,” Yup, she decides. It’s  _ definitely  _ guilt gnawing at her stomach. “I -- I didn’t mean to...they’re not any...wow,” Bobbi says finally. “I’m sorry for assuming.” She had, hadn’t she? Assumed this man, with his twelve pumps of mocha and double chocolate bagel, had lived a life free of any prejudice, with privilege. “They’re okay?”

“Leo’s fine,” Hunter shrugs with the air of a man who’s just trying to take it a day at a time. “Alex could be better. Mum and Dad are trying to keep him from getting his hormones.” Bobbi heaves the last bag into the dumpster. “‘S hard when you’re over here, y’know? Only so much you can do from across the pond.” His gaze turns to her, and she has to flush a little at its caring scrutiny. “You’re okay, Bob?” 

Bobbi shrugs. Her situation’s better than most, she knows, and she’s at the very least able to fend for her own ass well enough. (She doesn’t think about how she’s going to handle next semester -- that’s a then problem, not a now problem.) “I’m okay,” she says finally, and she sends him a look that she’s been on the receiving end of for years: one of sympathy. “Come on. I’m making you your coffee. On the house.”

* * *

 

“Bobbi, your bagel boyfriend’s here.” 

“He’s not my bagel  _ anything, _ ” Bobbi huffs, but she still reaches for the coffee she’s prepared ahead of time. Elena, bless her heart, has already popped the bagel in the toaster so that it’s ready by the time Hunter reaches the register. “Hey, Hunter.” He’s surprised the first morning Bobbi pre-makes his coffee for him (“You get  _ twelve  _ pumps of mocha. You really think anyone else gets the same thing as you do?”) but learns to take it with the same irritating smile he’s always had, complete with a “Thanks, Bob!”. 

“Is that my double chocolate bagel?” 

“When is it  _ not  _ your double chocolate bagel?”

“Ah. See...I was kind of hoping I could get something else today?”

The whole kitchen stops in earnest. Having come to know Hunter as the only one who gets double chocolate bagels, this displacement in their day has left them all reeling. “Boy, are you serious?” Skye looks at him as if he’s grown five heads. “What’s next, you gonna ask for caramel in your coffee instead of mocha?” 

“Wha...what do you mean you’re not getting a double chocolate bagel?” Jemma asks, as if she doesn’t know how to ring up anything but a double chocolate bagel and large iced. “Wh...how else am I supposed to ring you up?” Bobbi rolls her eyes. Had it not been for her noticeable prolonged absence the other day, she was pretty sure none of them would’ve given the change a second glance. 

“What do you want?” 

“Plain bagel, chive and onion cream cheese...and a double chocolate bagel, strawberry cream cheese...and my coffee.” Several shouts rend the air, most of all a loud “JESUS FUCK” from Skye, who’s retreated to the end of the bar. “I never said I was getting something  _ instead  _ of my bagel!” 

“I spit in your coffee,” Bobbi informs him dutifully. “The least I could do for my fellow baristas after you almost betrayed us all,” Elena hands Hunter the second bag with a scowl on her face, but she goes away shaking her head affectionately. He makes Bobbi happy in a way she hasn’t seen since before her parents left her out in the cold, she knows -- and she doesn’t see the broken girl Skye picked up in the middle of the night anymore.

This Bobbi is happier, fuller. More whole. She approves of the changes. 

Hunter, meanwhile, is still offended Bobbi’s tried such a tactic. “And here I thought I was your favorite customer,” he scoffs. “I come in here every day and buy the same thing from you. Never change it up. That warrants nothing in terms of loyalty? I could’ve gone to the Starbucks across the street, you know.” 

“Starbucks won’t put twelve pumps of mocha in your coffee, Hunter,” Bobbi informs him smugly, but she’s grinning. “Not if we call them and tell them. We tend to do it with all of the customers Skye drives off by swearing.” She pauses, slightly lost in thought. “Actually, I’m pretty sure every time Skye drives one to Starbucks, we get one more from over there.”

The Brit actually cradles his coffee close to his chest, his pride injured. “Not my coffee. Not my baby.” When Bobbi raises an eyebrow, he concedes. “Alright,  _ Bob _ . Guess I’ll just have to keep never knowing if you’ve spit in my coffee. Although, if you think about it, it does kind of mean we’ve swapped spit.” It’s his turn to wink. “And I haven’t even taken you out to dinner yet.” 

“And you’re not going to get to if you keep calling me Bob,” she answers, leaning on the counter. “In fact, did you know that the more you keep calling me that, the more your chances decrease every single day you call me that? At this rate, Skye might ask me out first and I’d say yes.  _ Kidding _ ,” she emphasizes to Jemma, who’s shot her a wounded look. “Skye is happily taken and I plan to remain a bridesmaid at her wedding.” 

“I’m demoting you just for that, Morse. And could you make me that macchiato that just came in?”

“So,  _ Bobbi _ .” Bobbi looks up from where she’s labelling a coffee cup with precise handwriting. “I heard there’s this coffee shop down the street that does different classes every night.” Hunter nervously twirls the straw to his coffee. “Tonight’s, uh...tonight’s paint night, and I was wondering if you wanted to maybe go? With me?” 

The coffee cup slips from Bobbi’s hand, which has suddenly gone still with the rest of her body.

“Not if you don’t want to, of course!” Hunter backtracks hurriedly. “I mean, I could’ve been reading this all wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time a beautiful girl’s turned me down, obviously, but...you’re something different. And I, uh...thought you got that.” When Bobbi shows no sign of recovering the dropped coffee, he nods. He knows when to take an exit when he sees one. “Let me know if she turns out okay?” Skye glances over and nods, her eyes filled with concern. “I’ll just...I’ll go.” 

The bell to the door isn’t much in the general cacophony that usually accompanies Phil’s, but it may as well have been a gong to Bobbi’s ears. Slowly, she picks up the coffee cup, her movements increasing incrementally until she’s able to make coffee at an adequate pace. Her mind, however, remains blissfully blank, having turned to static as soon as the question had popped out of Hunter’s mouth. 

She could’ve said yes. Hell, she  _ should’ve  _ said yes. Heaven knew she deserved something good in her life after the shitshow that had been her life as of late. But she’s no stranger to the fact that as soon as he sees past the facade she puts on for work every day, he’ll probably be gone faster than their morning coffee rolls. Bobbi doesn’t question why it happens. She just knows it does. 

And call her selfish, but it’s not something she wants to lose. If that means turning down Lance Hunter every day for the rest of her life (or at least, as long as she works at SHIELD), it’s something she could probably live with.

* * *

 

**Six months later**

“Hey, Phil, did you order double chocolate bagels today?” Melinda, Phil’s assistant manager (and wife, which Phil denies all plausible correlation for) flicks through the bakery’s bagel delivery for the day. “I don’t see them on the rack.” She keeps looking, hoping they’ll be somewhere behind the donuts and the odd pastry Corporate’s instructed them to sell that month. No such luck.

“Did they not give us the double chocolate bagels?” Phil frowns, looking through the rack himself as if they’ll turn up. “Damn. I knew Corporate sent out an email talking about the things they were downsizing, but I didn’t think it’d be this soon. We’re supposed to get rid of the double chocolate bagels, because apparently no one’s ordering them.” 

Melinda figures one double chocolate bagel every day for the last six months won’t be enough to change their mind -- not even if the consumer of that bagel keeps their best barista happy. “What are we supposed to tell Hunter?” She combs through the rest of the baked goods, transferring each of them into the case. “Bobbi took home the last case yesterday.” 

Phil yawns. It’s too early to deal with this shit. Why did they open at five, anyways? “Maybe he’ll start eating more healthily now. Maybe Bobbi’ll finally say yes to his date. Or maybe he’ll be so offended he never comes around here again.” Melinda shoots him a look. “It’s four-thirty in the morning, Mel. Ask me again in an hour and a half.” 

“Bobbi comes in in an hour and a half.”

“Exactly.” 

Her husband keeps true to his word, and as soon as Bobbi’s clocked in, he pounces. “We don’t have any double chocolate bagels.” 

“We don’t  _ what _ ?” Bobbi’s hair pauses in tying it into her trademark ponytail. “What do you mean, ‘we don’t have any double chocolate bagels’? The hell am I supposed to tell Lance?” Just when she’d been growing on them, too. Damn him for making her curious about them with strawberry cream cheese. “Whose idea was it, anyways?” 

“Corporate,” Melinda calls. She resets the coffee pot. “We’re downsizing our menu to supposedly make things easier for our customers. Speaking of which, Phil, you need to hold a staff meeting to tell them about the things we’re getting rid of.” Bobbi huffed and dumped the tips into a cup. 

“I’ll tell him. But I’m not gonna like it.” She pauses, turning to stare at the donut case. “What else are we getting rid of?” 

The morning passes by in even more of a rush than usual -- Elena gets backed up on sandwiches more than once, Jemma has to fill the coffee grinder constantly, and Bobbi  _ almost  _ gets papercuts from all of the on-the-go receipts. Almost. It’s enough to take their minds off of the fact that for the first time in six months, they’ll have to ask one of their most loyal customers to choose another bagel. 

Which, for any customer, wouldn’t be such a matter of life and death, honestly, but seeing as they’d come to see that Hunter’s daily interaction with Bobbi influenced her mood for the rest of the day, it was getting to be pretty damn important. At least they could still make his coffee. 

“The sugar cube is in the building, repeat, the sugar cube is in the building.” Hunter just shoots Bobbi a thumbs-up from the back of the line, accompanying it with his signature wink. She winks back, dramatically pantomiming spitting into his coffee and holding it up for him to see. “Do we have eyes on the sugar cube?”

“We  _ get  _ it, Bobbi, you think he’s sweet,” Skye deadpans. “Now could you just grow a pair and ask him out? It’s been six months!” Six months has really done a wonder for all of them, Bobbi especially -- Jemma and Skye have just celebrated their one-year anniversary, Elena and Mack have  _ finally  _ managed to get onto the path that’s dating each other, and Phil is (very subtly) glowing with the fact that he’s going to be a father.

But Bobbi? After a long, drawn-out yelling match in the financial aid office (she may or may not have brought Melinda along with her) not soon after she turned Hunter down, her grades had been reviewed, financial situation reassessed, and admissions officers thoroughly cowed, it  _ miraculously  _ turned out she’d been paying almost double of what the university’d expected of her. 

The check had been so large Phil’d stared at it to make sure they hadn’t put in too many zeros.

In the six months following, Bobbi’s not only gotten to stop depending on Phil’s leftover baked goods as a meal plan (thank goodness, because one could only eat so many bagels without wanting to chuck them to the squirrels), but, at Phil’s request, has gotten to take some time off simply for herself. She knows herself better now -- having been on shaky ground with both herself and her parents after coming out -- and’s even gotten to go on a couple of dates.

Not that they’d gotten anywhere: all of her dates had told her she sounded like she’d been holding onto a past regret, and to go get it before they got away. Whenever she thinks about it too hard, she resents it a little, sure -- but it’s always accompanied by the thought that yeah, maybe she’d needed to go through everything she had to arrive at this moment in time.

Speaking of which -- “The hell, Bob? What happened to my double chocolate bagel?” 

She looks up to see Hunter puppy-pouting at her, holding the bag gingerly. “This is a cinnamon raisin that Elena toasted well done to make it  _ look  _ like it was a double chocolate!”

“But did it work?” Elena yelled from the sandwich station. 

“For a bite, yes,” Hunter admits before turning the corners of his lips down again. Bobbi has to hold back a snort: he looks adorable when he’s like this. “This is worse than the time you tried to put Thin Mint in my coffee and say it was mocha!” 

“That was a bomb-ass prank,” Bobbi snorts. “But alas, we’re not shitting you. Corporate’s downsizing and we’re getting rid of the double chocolate bagels.” When Hunter’s expression becomes even more downtrodden, she pats his arm. “I know. I only found out this morning.” She hands him a wrapped package and a pen, a shrewd smile on her face. “You can have this bagel  _ only  _ if you circle the right answer.” Still pouting, Hunter takes it, reading the hasty scrawl on the wax paper. 

_ I heard there’s this coffee shop down the street that does different classes every night. Tonight’s bartending night, and I was wondering if you maybe wanted to go with me? Circle yes or no, and if you value your coffee, do  _ not  _ make a quip about how childish it is.  _

Yes                                                                               No

To his credit, Hunter’s expression doesn’t change as he reads the wrapper. All of the girls watch with bated breath, especially Jemma: she’d made the idea up to begin with. When he moves to the dining room and sits down, purposefully altering his position to hide what he’s doing, Bobbi shoots Skye a panicked look, cerulean eyes screaming for help. 

Skye just squeezes her hand. “It’s gonna be fine, okay? I’ve got you.” 

The wrapper is finally slid across the bar, Hunter’s expression neutral as he sips his coffee. Bobbi picks it up, unwilling to flip it over. What if it said no? Then she’d have put her reputation on the line for nothing, pulled all of the girls into the scheme for nothing, threatened several managers for nothing --

“Bobbi, flip it over or I’ll flip it over for you.” Elena waving a sandwich knife in the air is plenty incentive, and Bobbi flips the still-greasy wrapper over before she can reconsider. 

_ Yes  _ is circled with the marker she’d given to him a few minutes ago, along with what was apparently a short speech.  _ I’ve seen how far you’ve come in the last six months, Bobbi, and I just wanted to let you know I’m proud of you. You can only go up from here, and whether that’s to science fame or taking Phil’s spot  _ (“Not likely. Not until I retire.”),  _ you’ll do amazing at whatever you pick. Lance  _ is scribbled messily below the paragraph, accompanied by ten digits. 

Bobbi’s stomach drops. She’s actually done it. She looks up for Hunter, only to find nothing but a swinging door. 

“OH MY GOD!” Skye squeals for her, and Jemma has to inspect the coffee pots for cracks. “HE SAID YES!” She snatches the wrapper from Bobbi, jumping up and down as she reads it again. “And he’s PROUD of you. And he called you BOBBI!” For once, Bobbi’s glad to let Skye do all of the yelling. “What are you waiting for? Go text him!” 

“Uh, not all of you at once,” Melinda objects, but she’s smiling. “Skye, you can stay on the counter until Bobbi gets back. Then you can go take out the trash.” She turns to the smaller blonde, giving her a soft smile. “Go. Take your fifteen minutes and let me know what he says. And Bobbi?” The other girl stops, about to take her apron off. “You did good.” 

**Bobbi:** You enjoy your bagel? I had to threaten the manager of the SHIELD down the road for it. 

**Hunter:** Leo says thanks for the bagel. He’s sad you guys are getting rid of it, though. So. 7 tonight?

**Bobbi:** Oh my god, Lance Hunter. I’m replacing your mocha with pumpkin spice. I can’t believe you kept coming in to get a bagel that wasn’t even for you. 

**Bobbi:** But yes. I’ll see you at 7 :)

**Author's Note:**

> I really tried to work in a rainbow bagel. I really, really did. I have failed and I apologize.


End file.
